music, nature and relationships

These are all things that have been consuming my life lately. Two of my favorite bands, As Cities Burn and Manchester Orchestra came out with new albums last week, both are fantastic in my opinion. I have been playing a lot of disc golf and biking quite a bit so far this spring, which have both been very enjoyable and they make me feel productive and alive, maybe it's because they are both activities that are hard to become monotonous. Relationships have been really involving lately, mostly good. I have been telling myself for days now that I need to post about some of the things that I've been thinking about, but now it's 12:15AM and I am tired, so this is just a preface to what I want to write about. Jake, Zach, Mark and myself are taking a little disc golf road-trip this weekend, hopefully I'll have time to write/blog while we are 'traveling.' I'd like to finish this posting before we leave, hopefully tomorrow evening. (I've heard that one before)

I am listening to Emery's newest EP, "While Broken Hearts Prevail".

Easter weekend

Well, I'm going to try to make this short and sweet. This weekend was very eventful and high-stress, but also fun. Friday morning we picked up our car from the shop where we got the bumper replaced (someone backed into my car in my work's parking lot) and then we packed it full and headed for I90/I94. A medium coffee, a small chai tea, a new halloween alaska album and a 2 hour nap later (just Loran for the nap) and we were near Rockford, IL. I snarfed down some of my favorite fast food at Beef-A-Roo (if you haven't experienced Beef-A-Roo yet, please add it to your list, I think it's IL only). Loran's mom met us and picked up Loran, I then headed to Chi-town where I saw a sold out show with The Devil Wears Prada, A day to remember, Sky Eats Airplane and Emarosa. The bands were great, the sound was good, the teenagers were annoying and the heat was terrible, not to mention they wouldn't let you leave the venue to go get some of that windy city fresh air, which annoyed me. I wasn't in the mood to make friends or generate conversation with people, which is a bit odd for me... I assume the long, high stress drive made me a bit crabby/low energy and reserved. I forgot to mention that I made it to the show with 3 minutes to spare, and dealing with down town chicago traffic and parking, etc... it was not worth the stress. So the show was good, I left and stayed at my cousins, (if you read my new disc golf blog, a lot of this is a repeat, sorry). I made it to the Davis' farm and we went to a few family-friend events. This morning we went to church and celebrated that Christ is Risen! (He is Risen indeed). I feel like that is something that you must say if you believe in Christ, just like we ask how's it going to someone who we don't really care about the answer from. I just feel like some terms, prayers and scriptures we have become immune to and we just follow the leader and do what we're used to. He is Risen, what does that exactly mean? That a God that we cannot see, that does not only reside in a fleshly body came back to life in earthly form after he was/was not killed? I don't mean for this to come across as blasphemous or in vain, I just mean that we throw these terms around like we have our heads wrapped around them and that we understand so clearly... we don't! Just like the people in the book of Luke had no idea that they were talking to Jesus on the side of the road about how sad and depressed they were about the death of Jesus from Nazareth. We are/would be just as uncertain, I just dislike how comfortable we are with the stories... and I'm sure this follows right across the lines of me constantly questioning God and my faith, but I am getting too old to keep doing this strictly out of tradition or popular vote, I need a reason. Back to my point of keeping this short, as we were sitting in church hearing the pastor translate his version of the scripture in Luke 24 (1-50 I believe?) my beautiful bride who was rubbing my back (because she knows that physical touch is one of my strongest love languages) leaned over to me and said something that excited me and turned me on (not sexually) soo much, she said " If seeing is believing, then believe that we have lost our eyes". This is a lyric to one of my favorite bands, Manchester Orchestra, which Loran has only listened to because I play them or because the CD has been stuck in our Jetta's CD player - either way, props to her. It was so encouraging, and I'm pretty sure I mumbled to her, now that's a real worship song. The scripture that she was relating that lyric to was about the women who went to the empty tomb and couldn't find Jesus' body, so they went back to the men to try to describe what they had seen and they didn't believe (luk 24: 1-8?). It was a perfect harmony of several things that I love, and I had an "I fricken love this girl to death" moment right after she said that to me. Thank you God, for your gifts are abundant. Thank you for being resurrected in a way that forced us as people to have faith and believe in the unseen... God your geniusness and compassion for our souls and minds never tires - thank you, Amen. We finished the afternoon at Loran's grandparents, and then we headed home. Half way home we realized that Loran's purse, wallet and keys were missing, and that Aunt Tanya (my coworker and neighbor) had our only key to our place (our apartment just switched our locks to electronic and we only got two key fabs). So we had to track down our key before we could get home to the kitties. We are home now, and my beautiful wife is shleepin' next to me, and I would like to shpoon her... so, I guess this "short" blog will stop here. Thanks for listening. (I was listening to new ACB on their myspace while I was writing this, but it quit and I forgot to restart them - new song tomorrow/today!)